FX新剧《异星地球》以一个将垂危孩童意识上传至强大机体的“混合体”温蒂为核心，深刻探讨了“何以为人”的议题。该剧借鉴了《异形》系列风格，并通过温蒂及其同类“混合体”的故事，深入描绘了“人性”定义的可塑性。剧集背景设定在未来，主角温蒂由年仅11岁的玛西在意识上传后转化而来，与一群同样因绝症上传至成年机体的孩童一同生活。剧集引入了科技公司 Prodigy Corp. 的概念，以及类似埃隆·马斯克的Neuralink公司在脑机接口领域的探索，引发了关于意识上传、生命延续以及其中潜藏的伦理困境的思考。专家们指出，意识上传仍面临巨大的技术和伦理挑战，且其结果可能并非生命的延续，而是创造一个全新的、被改变的存在，永生或许是人类不应追求的“浮士德交易”，生命的脆弱性恰恰构成了其独特的美丽。

🤖 **意识上传与“人性”的重新定义**：《异星地球》围绕着一个将垂危孩童玛西意识上传至机体并化名为温蒂的“混合体”展开，她从迷茫地质疑“如果我不是人类，那我是什么？”到最终自信地宣称“我就是人类”，展现了在科技重塑身体和身份后，对“人性”定义的深刻探索与重塑。该剧通过温蒂及其“混合体”同伴的经历，在科幻框架下探讨了意识、记忆、情感与身体载体之间的复杂关系，以及当这些元素被科技重新组合时，个体的身份认同将如何演变。

🚀 **科技进步与伦理困境的交织**：剧中 Prodigy Corp. 将患绝症的孩童意识上传至成年机体的设定，呼应了现实中埃隆·马斯克Neuralink公司在脑机接口领域的研发。Neuralink旨在通过植入芯片来帮助残疾人士，但也引发了关于意识上传的伦理讨论。专家指出，将人类意识完全上传至合成体在技术上仍是高度推测性的，并且存在巨大的伦理挑战，例如意识上传的成功与否、其过程是否符合伦理规范，以及这是否会引发“扮演上帝”的争议。

💡 **永生追寻与生命脆弱性的辩证**：剧集深入探讨了人类对永生的渴望及其潜在的代价。专家认为，追求永生可能导致反乌托邦的未来，因为生命的真正价值和美丽恰恰在于其短暂和脆弱。将意识上传以换取永生，可能并非生命的延续，而是创造了一个全新的、被改变的存在，这种“浮士德交易”或许不应被接受。生命的意义可能在于其有限性，而非无限的延续。

🧠 **理解意识的根本性挑战**：要实现意识上传，首先需要解决的是我们对“意识”本身的理解。目前，科学界尚未完全理解意识的本质及其运作机制，无论是从神经元层面、分子层面还是量子层面。这种对意识本质的未知，是实现意识上传面临的根本性技术障碍。因此，在能够完全理解并复制意识之前，将人类意识转移到机器人或计算机芯片中的目标，距离现实仍有相当长的距离。

At the mid-point of Alien: Earth's first episode, the show's protagonist — an android uploaded with the consciousness of a dying child — shakily asks, "If I'm not human, what am I?" By the episode’s end, the "hybrid" known as Wendy (Sydney Chandler) confidently proclaims, "I am human."

Noah Hawley’s new FX series owes much of its style to the original 1979 Alien film, but thanks to its fascinating hybrid storyline, much of its narrative drive is more similar to Alien’s divisive prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, and the crowd-pleasing midquel, Alien: Romulus. With Wendy and her hybrid cohorts, Hawley gets to explore the malleable definition of "human" outside the constraints of a two-hour-long film. 

On the show, Wendy is the new version of Marcy, an 11-year-old (played by Florence Bensberg) succumbing to a terminal illness. Prodigy Corp. CEO and trillionaire Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin) convinces Marcy she can live forever by uploading her brain activity into the "body" of a powerful android. After the successful transition of Marcy into Wendy (and Marcy’s off-screen death), Prodigy secretly uploads several more terminal children into androids, who are all physically designed as young adults, but think, reason, and emote as the children they once were. 

Wendy tells her new sibling hybrids that Prodigy needed young brains to create their new forms, as adult noggins wouldn’t fit inside the androids. It’s sci-fi science and narrative necessity that likely dictates this delineation between adults and children, but the attempt to turn neural activity into code isn’t far-fetched. Neuralink, founded by Elon Musk (who bears certain similarities to Kavalier), has been developing implantable brain-computer interfaces for nearly a decade, with the stated goal of helping people with disabilities regain mobility and independence via technology. Last year, Musk announced Neuralink implanted its first brain chip in a human.

"[The chip] enables control of your phone or computer, and through them almost any device, just by thinking," Musk tweeted at the time. "Initial users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs. Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer."

Neuralink's chip implantation on a quadriplegic patient yielded some successful results, but didn't go exactly as planned.

Playing God?

David Ryan Polgar is the founder and president of the nonprofit All Tech Is Human, which works with Silicon Valley companies and organizations on thorny ethical issues. Polgar draws a clear line between what Neuralink is ostensibly pursuing and what Prodigy accomplishes. 

"While there are well-known companies like Neuralink that work on brain-computer interfaces, the process of uploading human consciousness to a synthetic body is still highly speculative,” Polgar tells Mashable. “The vast technical hurdles and ethical dilemmas of uploading human consciousness haven't fully dampened the predictions of futurists, which is why the concept plays out in Alien: Earth as hybrids."

Prof. Carlos Gershenson-Garcia, an empire innovation professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton, says tech companies are many years from implanting our souls into robots or computer chips. (Alien: Earth is set nearly 100 years in the future, so they have time to catch up to the show.)

"The main problem is that we still don’t understand what consciousness is, nor how it functions in us and other species," Gershenson-Garcia says. "We assume that our brains have to do something with it, but we don’t know which mechanisms are responsible for it. Is it at the neuronal level? Molecular level? Quantum level? We have no idea. So how could we aim to replicate it in robots?"

If companies like Neuralink do have ambitions to transfer human consciousness, would they collaborate with ethicists and thinkers like Polgar or Gershenson-Garcia, or do it furtively like the fictional Prodigy Corp.? Gershenson-Garcia hopes the former would be true, saying that, irregardless of whatever form they took, "building conscious machines creates moral responsibilities that we might not be ready for."

For Polgar, he is full of questions that sound very similar to ones being raised on Alien: Earth.

"The larger questions that the prospect of uploading human consciousness presents are whether the result is a continuation of the individual's life or a new, altered being, and whether striving to live forever is a worthy pursuit," he says. "Living forever is the ultimate Faustian Bargain, a desire that should never really be pursued or accepted. Paradoxically, the very beauty of life is tied to its fragility. So while uploading consciousness to live forever is the dream of many, it would lead to a dystopian future for all of us."